What is a game changer for a business? It is undoubtedly a successful marketing strategy. Usually, B2B enterprises are more eager to run marketing campaigns as compared to B2C companies. Hence, there is a growing need for businesses to adhere to and adopt any prevalent new B2B marketing trends.
Over the last 5-10 years, the B2B marketing sector has experienced a great deal of change. Marketers have now moved their attention from sales & cold calling to strategies such as digital content marketing and tactics like search engine optimization to attract new and potential customers to the business. Businesses should constantly gauge and incorporate the latest B2B marketing trends to stay ahead of the race. The emerging trends are altering the B2B marketing space. Without further ado, let us deep dive into the defining patterns that have become relevant trends for companies striving to outsmart their competitors.
Hyper-personalization is not just addressing the recipient by name in an email campaign. It is about coining a customized message that resonates with the prospect’s individual goals after comprehending their unique needs, challenges, and industry nuances. By adopting mix of data analytics, AI, and automation tools, businesses can create effective hyper-personalized targeting endeavors vital for ROI. According to research conducted by McKinsey and Company, 71% of users expect businesses to offer personalized interactions. Through hyper-personalization, companies can create immersive user-individualized journeys, fostering trustworthy client relationships to optimize conversion rates.
One of the prominent marketing trends that is catching up includes video marketing. Businesses that leverage video marketing to engage their prospects and customers have a fair opportunity to stand out from the rest, as the market is saturated with text-based content. As an average person watches 17 hours of online video per week, businesses can swoop in and monopolize some of those minutes to promote their products or services. With more consumers using mobile devices, companies can use mobile-friendly video content to reach a broader audience base and stay relevant in the competitive B2B landscape.
Additionally, to increase their brand visibility, enhance their product’s outreach, drive engagement, and reach the appropriate audience, B2B marketers can make video marketing part of their social media strategy.
With the advent of devices like Siri and Alexa, prospects prefer to say what they are looking for. With household robots just answering user questions, businesses should definitely explore voice search. The fact that 50% of buyers prefer to carry on their B2B searches through voice assistants suggests that companies should be inclined toward promoting their products through voice search. By creating content that mirrors the natural speech patterns, businesses will get better results as users usually tend to phrase conversational voice queries while searching for products.
Though the pay-to-play nature of influencer marketing engenders skepticism in the audience, the positive impact of this promotional tactic cannot be overlooked. Businesses can utilize influencers with a large enthusiastic following as brand advocates or vocal product endorsers to breed trust and create genuine connections. Due to the vast effect this promotional tactic harbors, 80% of businesses intend to splurge on Influencer marketing. Influencer marketing has a reverberating impact on social media and other marketing platforms.
Influencer marketing can attract customers in a big way, acting as a form of word-of-mouth advertising. When an influential person, industry expert, or celebrity gets in front of an audience that admires and respects them, these enthusiasts are more inclined to believe them and purchase a product. Via influencer marketing, businesses can develop authentic connections with their target audience. Additionally, influencer marketing can generate ample traction and create a long-lasting impact on the brand or product, creating good business outreach. For instance, consider a user’s favorite celebrity is promoting something on social verse. Even though the user is unwilling to make a purchase immediately, they would pay attention to what the celebrity is saying and arrive at a decision later. An influencer can have a ripple effect on a business; it raises brand awareness, enables marketers to reach a broad audience base, brings more prospects into the sales pipeline, increases sales, and gains a larger market.
Getting prospects to take action is an arduous task for B2B marketers. They require means and methods to predict their needs and to effectively connect with them. Behavioral science can provide a resolution to this problem, helping businesses improve response rates and messaging. Some nuances they can adopt include focusing on their prospect’s emotions to increase conversion rate. They can also rely on the endowment effect, i.e., adopt a strategy that gives users a perception that they are about to lose something that was theirs to drive action. For instance, messaging like, credit in a user’s account is about to expire is more impactful than a discount offer. Enterprises can explore the concept of using labels to trigger desired responses. By painting a picture of a group that resonates with the audience, marketers can nudge them to act like that tribe. For instance, by saying, “For tax professionals like you,” businesses can provide a viable solution for the label they choose and initiate a user response that paves the way for positive outcomes.
Virtual reality is slowly gaining ground, as 53% of consumers prefer to purchase from a brand that uses VR over a business that does not. As a simulated, multi-sensory experience, VR provides an immersive environment different from the real world with the help of a head-mounted display. Businesses looking to provide an immersive environment different from the real world should opt for virtual reality. As a simulated, multi-sensory experience enhanced with software and hardware components, VR’s head-mounted display allows businesses to offer an experience that strikes a chord with users. Real-time product testing, virtual store tours, and the ability to showcase the practical advantages of their products are some of the benefits VR bestows B2B marketers that help them to persuade users to buy quickly. Besides acting as a brand differentiator, VR can fast-track the sales cycle, which is vital for a company to boost sales.
If you are a business skeptical about exploring podcasts as a facet of marketing, these numbers might change your opinion. According to insights from Edison Research, 54% of audience consider products advertised on podcasts. By using the right subject and appropriate statistics and asking experts in specific fields to share their ideas. Podcasts enable enterprises to address the user’s pain points and position their product as a solution provider.
Though the benefits of AI and automation galore, the authenticity of a genuine human touch cannot be ignored. By incorporating emotional storytelling, businesses can establish a deeper connection with their audience, build trust, and differentiate their brand from their competitors. At a time when consumers are reluctant to check emails or respond to a cold call, by using the art of storytelling, B2B marketers can appeal to their user’s emotions and evoke a response. They can lean into humor and fun infuse the voices and experiences of their existing customers to craft a brand narrative for addressing the challenges affecting their users. By infusing human touch into their email marketing, businesses can enhance the impact of their messaging and connect with users personally. One of the email marketing strategies companies can consider to achieve this includes the CHEETAH framework.
Businesses can foster brand growth and user engagement by building a decentralized community. They can create a network of loyal customers passionate about their brand, get them to interact, share their unique perspectives about certain subjects, and drive engagement. Also, being present where the decentralized community congregates businesses can influence new users to join and optimize client acquisition.
Given the harsh, completive B2B landscape, businesses need to keep guesswork away while making decisions and instead rely on data and evidence. They should have access to massive and accurate data to analyze information and uncover trends for effective decision-making. With apt business data at their behest, enterprises can develop the ability to choose prospects wisely, understand their needs, predict outcomes, and adapt and evolve strategies for success.
Intent monitoring can work wonders for businesses! It allows enterprises to access prospects who are in need of their products. Hence, instead of trying to search for the audience and make them want what they are offering, enterprises can sell their product directly to prospects who intend to purchase it. Additionally, intent monitoring lets businesses gain valuable insights about their user’s likes and dislikes and modulate their offerings accordingly for better sales.
The only thing constant in marketing is change. From increasing the importance of data–driven decision-making to infusing emotions and human touch into marketing strategies, the emerging trends are changing the B2B landscape. With the influx of emerging trends, businesses should be agile and latch on to them to thrive in the dynamic landscape essential to their offerings, products, or services that talk of the town.
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